Book Review: Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas

A work colleague lent me this book because he said it reminded him of my life.  I opened it and read the first few pages on a cold, wintry Sunday in February.  I read, ‘It was a cold Sunday in early February’…intriguing…  I continued: ‘I’d spent most of [the day] curled up in bed in the damp and disintegrating terraced cottage.’  I looked at the walls of my damp and disintegrating house.  Curiouser and curiouser.

OurTragic Universe is a storyless story told by our narrator, Meg.  Meg is a writer who’s been trying to finish her literary first novel for years but spends most of her time obsessing over her dog, eating tangerines, knitting socks and bumbling around the Dartmouth area.  She seems to be in Devon due to some self-imposed exile from Brighton and lives in this mouldy leaking house (the rent was cheap) with her miserable boyfriend Christopher (who spends a lot of his time moaning and lying on the sofa being pathetic).

But then into Meg’s life comes… well not a lot really.  She’s interested in narrative theory and loves discussing different ideas of stories with her various friends and acquaintances.  So we get all the big names and ideas here: Propp, Jung, Campbell, Chekhov.  She’s sick of writing formulaic genre fiction (she’s a ghostwriter for a series of YA novels) and wants her literary opus to be a work of ground-breaking post-modern genius.  At one stage she considers turning her almost unintelligible notes for her ever-changing novel into the actual novel itself and calling it NOTEBOOK. She duly deletes most of her gazillionth draft and finds her word-count at 43.

Scarlett Thomas mirrors and explores a lot of these ideas through her plot and structure – not that there is much of a plot to speak of, more a series of random events.  Although are they random?  Meg tries a bit of cosmic ordering and can’t quite work out whether some things that happen are as a result.  Who knows?  You certainly won’t.  There’s also the Beast.  The Beast is roaming Dartmoor, howling at night and snuffling under doors.  Meg's dog goes to investigate and snuffles under the door too (as I was reading this my cat went to investigate some strange noise coming from under the front door). Now just as you think you've got a more conventional plot device…well, let’s just say don’t expect Hound of the Baskervilles.

This is an ideas book.  You've really got it all: reincarnation, cosmic ordering, narrative, cultural norms, parapsychology, Tarot, archetypes, animal psychology, Zen, magic… But often a lot of this knowledge is delivered to us through a long conversation and info-dump from characters just hanging round Devon, not doing a lot. This would be my main criticism of Thomas’ book.  However when the narrator is interesting, the ideas good and the writing wonderfully witty and insightful, you probably won’t mind.

But did I get any insights into my own life?  Did fiction continue to mirror reality?  Well let’s look at the evidence.

• Lives in a mouldy, disintegrating house (check)
• Leak in ceiling (check)
• Persistent cough due to damp (sort of check.  Only while I was still sleeping in the room with no ceiling)
• Thinking of moving (check)
• Co-dependency with her dog (check – well, cat)
• Loves having pretentious conversations about narrative and stories with friends (check)
• Tarot (check)
• Cosmic ordering (check – I thought it had worked too! But then it didn't)
• Believes in magic (check – Sort of. When Derren Brown hypnotised the nation it rather embarrassingly worked on me)
• Trying to write literary “opus” (yawn, check)
• Favourite poem is Convergence of the Twain (check)
• Mum is obsessed with scanning all her old photos (God yes)
• The Beast (check – if we can count the foxes living in the garden)

Yes Meg is clearly me.  It’s official.  The whole experience reminded me a bit of that story – you know the one – where this girl is putting together a jigsaw puzzle.  As she adds the pieces she realises the picture on the puzzle is her own room, and there she is, sat at a table doing a puzzle.  How strange.  But what’s that at the window?  Only a few pieces left.  Is it…is it…some slavering axe murderer waiting to pounce?  Wait a minute, what’s that sound….?

The rules of attraction: what Bret Easton Ellis has taught us about dating

It’s that time of year again when stands in book-stores are filled with the complete works of Jane Austen and frilly pink gift editions of Shakespeare’s sonnets.  Yes, Valentine’s Day is upon us once more, with its tantalising whiff of love, smooches and stuffed teddies.  But what would bad boy of postmodernism, Bret Easton Ellis, have to say about this love thing?  What advice might he offer to those in the dating game?

1.  It’s always important to look one’s best

One thing’s for sure, surface is everything.  Whether you’re dressed to impress with your latest designer duds like American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman or name-dropping your celeb friends like Glamorama’s Victor Ward, you owe it to yourself to be utterly beautiful and glittering.  Prepare carefully for your romantic evening: exfoliate, wax, tweeze and moisturise.  Don’t forget to floss.  Then you’re ready to hit a nice restaurant like Spago with your date, and maybe a club or two later.  Strike a pose, there’s nothing to it.  Who cares what’s underneath?

2.  Money = sexy time

There’s nothing more attractive to the opposite sex than walking into a bar and buying three bottles of Cristal, a Mexican dancing girl and a dwarf.  And if you’re whining that you can’t afford it maybe you should just shut the fuck up and take a Xanax or something.

3.  Pick your locations carefully

We all know some places are better to pick up that special person than others.  Go for college dorms, parties, late night bars, restaurants with six month waiting lists and badly lit street corners. 

4. If you haven’t got anything nice to say don’t say anything

It’s absolutely fine to be racist, homophobic and sexist.  Just don’t let your date know that you’re racist, homophobic and sexist.  It’s all about looks remember?  But the thing to note carefully here is this only counts if you actually care about your date’s opinion.  If you don’t, well you just keep right on venting.

5. Drugs make you popular and hot

Stuck for witty banter and topics of conversation on your date?  Follow the example of Clay from Less than Zero; do some fat lines and you’ll be ready to impress the object of your affections with your sparkling wit, confidence and intellect.  When you’re ready to go some place a bit more secluded and comfortable, take Valium to get the mood right.

6. Be quick! You've got a shelf life

You've got to be fast in this dating game.  No amount of riches is going to help when you’re old and wrinkly at twenty-eight.  Surgery can only assist you so far.  So get yourself out there and hook yourself a real looker before it’s too late.

Just remember – there’s not someone for everyone out there, so you’ve got to be at the top of your game.  But hopefully if you borrow a leaf from Bret’s bibliography you’ll soon be ready to put on those Wayfarers, hit the bright lights of the big city, and find some hard-body to love all of your very own.

Book Review: Perdido Street Station by China Mieville

The best character in China Mieville’s second novel is the city of New Crobuzon itself – a sprawling, crazy and psychedelic metropolis that would have made Hunter S Thompson proud.  The hub of this city is Perdido Street Station.  From here the city spirals out into different boroughs, districts and oddities; there’s slums and high rises occupied by bird-men, sewers and abattoirs, a glass dome full of sentient cactus people and a dump which is home to HAL 9000 and his buddies.  Oh, and there’s bugs.  Christ, are there bugs.  There’s a whole bug ghetto and the protagonist Isaac (a tubby and edgy scientist) is dating a woman with a scarab beetle for a head.  Yes, you read that right.  Add to this mix a giant spider that shimmers in and out of reality and likes cutting off people’s ears and some giant moths that suck your mind out and there’s a real bug-fest going on. 

Isaac is approached by Yagharek, one of the bird-men (a garuda) who’s been maimed by his own kind and had his wings sawed off.  He wants to be able to fly again and hopes Isaac can help him.  Although Isaac is a scientist, the science studied in New Crobuzon is all kinds of fantastical: magic and demonology sit beside physics and chemistry here.  The plot threads are disparate to start with; we move from Isaac and his research to his creepy-crawlie girlfriend Lin, who’s crafting a sculpture of a local crime lord with khepri spit (don’t ask) to the corrupt heads of state to an underground politically active newspaper.  These strands all eventually combine into what’s essentially an overblown bug-hunt, as giant slake-moths terrorize the city each night (Isaac inadvertently hatched one and let it escape).

In a way this seemed a bit of a cop-out to me.  Mieville spends so long world-building and creating his wide-ranging cast that once it all becomes focused on hunting moths Perdido Street Station falls into more familiar and lacklustre ways.  And at nearly 900 pages this is a long book.  If I wanted giant creatures attacking each other in a city I’d be watching Mothra vs Godzilla.  Still, the ending re-awakened my interest.  It’s pleasingly bitter-sweet and downbeat, raising a load of ethical issues and questions.  Fans of urban fantasy, the new weird and speculative fiction will love Perdido Street Station.  But be prepared for an acid trip of a plot and lots of creepy-crawlies.

Book Review: Dark Matter by Michelle Paver

There’s nothing like a bit of horror and creepiness to get you through the winter months so Dark Matter (2010) by Michelle Paver seemed the ideal reading material for a dreary British January.  Paver’s novel (nominated for The Shirley Jackson Award) is set in 1937 and centres on Jack, a working class boy who’s down on his luck and has lost his dream of becoming a world class physicist.  This is because Jack is POOR.  However, hope lands in the shape of some Oxbridge chaps, all with names like Teddy and Algie and Gus.  They are RICH.  We know this because they say things like “grand” instead of “okay”.

In an echo of Frankenstein and the scientific pursuits of Walton, the lads all set off on an expedition to the Arctic and to what is surely a fruitful environment for any spooky story - 24 hour darkness.  And it is quite creepy.  You get a real sense of claustrophobia as time runs out and the daylight disappears, plus we know that something unwholesome is lurking around, biding its time. 

But that’s all you get really.  A sort of squelchy, cold creepiness.  As soon as Jack sees the old bear baiting pole I guessed what it had been used for.  And there are so many missed opportunities.  What could have been a slow, menacing possession was just a series of vaguely sinister events.  The “revelation” barely caused me to blink (or shudder).

I think it’s the voice I find most unconvincing.  Paver narrates most of the story through Jack’s journal and it’s here that it falls apart a bit.  I know we’ve established Jack is POOR, but his language veers between clichéd examples of ’30s slang and childishly simple sentences.  Is this Jack or Paver?  Perhaps Paver hasn’t made the jump from children’s to adult fiction as seamlessly as others thought.

And then we get to dog obsessions and thinly veiled homo-eroticism.  Jack talks about his favourite husky like some dementedly twee eight year-old from an Enid Blyton novel.  I thought they were going to slap each other on the back at one point and settle down to a spiffingly good tea party with scones and lashings of ginger beer.  And guess what?  Jack loves Gus.  But he can’t say it because he’s a man you know.  Stiff upper lip, what what.  But he loves him!  He really does old chap!  And do you know what?  I think good old Gus might love him back too!  Damn that rotten, bloody ghost.   Dammit to hell!

Dark Matter is great for atmosphere and does offer some genuinely disturbing moments.  But it’s a disposable read that won’t be keeping you up late at night, worrying about what’s hiding in the closet.

Reading List 2013

Perdido Street Station - China Mieville (urban fantasy best avoided by arachnophobes)

Macbeth - Shakespeare (a re-read for work)

Our Tragic Universe - Scarlett Thomas (enjoyed this!)

Written on the Heart - David Edgar (pretty weighty stuff: Tyndale, King James Bible, semantics, lots of men debating religion)

Waiting for Sunrise - William Boyd (literary thriller that doesn't quite cut it)

The Reader - Bernhard Schlink (found the tone/voice oddly disengaging)

The Low Road - Chris Womersley (neo noir meets Cormac McCarthy)

The Twelve - Justin Cronin (vampire saga part 2)

The Whaleboat House (literary whodunnit)

AngelFall - Susan Ee (YA novel I reviewed for The Hollywood News)

Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk (finally got round to it. Think I've seen the film too many times as I found it a bit....boring!)

The Game - AS Byatt (too dry...yawn)

Moby Dick - Herman Meville (love this book)

The Virgin Suicides - Jeffery Eugenides (you'll like it for the rose tinted '70s nostalgia) 

Seventh Heaven - Alice Hoffman (American suburban life)

To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee (hadn't read this since junior school)

The Bone Season - Samantha Shannon (reviewed for The Hollywood News)

The Shining Girls - Lauren Beukes (yeah I enjoyed this - murder and time travel)

Theatre Review: Doctor Faustus at The Globe

I recently managed to see the Globe’s production of Doctor Faustus at a local cinema (Globe Onscreen is this brilliant initiative that allows you to view a stage production in the comfort of an Odeon or Vue, complete with popcorn).

All I can say is: WOW.  Seriously.  Doctor Faustus is perhaps one of my favourite early modern plays.  It’s a weird mix of medieval morality and burgeoning renaissance interiority, plus it has demons, devils and necromancy.  Christopher Marlowe’s play follows the story of an arrogant and clever scholar who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for power, wealth and most importantly knowledge.  But after his twenty-four years are up the prospect of spending an eternity in hell doesn’t seem quite so attractive.

Matthew Dunster’s production is a complete baroque spectacle.  The comic scenes are pushed right to the forefront in all their ribald and Bakhtinian excesses, while the scenes between Faustus and Mephastophilis alternate between a kind of budding bromance and chilling master/slave relationship.  Arthur Darvill plays Mephastophilis, thrown out of heaven for conspiring with Lucifer against God.  He’s deceptively gentle, waiting till the end to show his true metal.  Paul Hilton is a kind of world-weary, down-to-earth Faustus.  He rolls out Marlowe’s mighty lines like he’s reciting it to some mates down the pub, but I kinda like it - Faustus as one of us.  This pair is a kind of odd couple, bounding around the stage doing all sorts of hi-jinks.  They even wear matching skull caps and red capes at one point – uncanny doubles of each other.  Their buddy relationship is so disarming that it genuinely shocks when you realise Mephisto still is very much Satan’s minion. It’s a really visual and mesmerising production all round. The good angel and evil angel are dramatised almost like anime characters; they run onto the stage, performing high kicks and screams that wouldn’t look out of place in Mortal Kombat, and we get an actual dragon.  Yes, a dragon.

And Lucifer – words cannot describe how AMAZING he is.  He’s actually a satyr, a dirty old man-goat lurching and leering around the stage, rubbing his grubby paws up and down his legs at the thought of Faustus’ lovely soul (all swollen with pride - extra yummy). Watching the final horrifying scene as Faustus realises his time is up and he panics, while Lucifer gloats at the side of the stage is totally disturbing and aided by increasingly increasingly chaotic music (Dunster’s production follows Text B rather than the shorter Text A. In Text A Faustus is alone for most of the final scene).  And finally, Faustus is dragged to hell.  Well, he kind of crowd surfs actually, physically hoisted up and carried in through those gates by all of Lucifer’s cronies (they carry freaky puppets that they stretch and torture).

Being a Globe production we get a little dance at the end too; Faustus and Mephisto jam together on guitar. I like to imagine them together, down in hell talking over old times.  What more could you want?

The Horror...The Horror... Best Halloween Movies

There's not much I like more than a good horror film.  Well, actually, there's a lot I like more, now I come to think of it.  But I do like horror an awful lot.  For the month of October The Hollywood News did a run-down of top terrors, and I wrote about five of my favourites.

The list goes as follows:

Halloween
Suspiria
The Exorcist
Candyman
Trick 'R Treat
The Haunting
Kwaidan
Scream
Carrie
Don't Look Now
An American Werewolf in London
The Descent
[REC]
Let the Right One In
The Innocents
The Devils
The Woman
House of 1000 Corpses
Friday the 13th
The Wicker Man
Antichrist
The Blair Witch Project
Misery
Audition
Evil Dead II
The Omen
Eden Lake
Magic
The Thing
The Shining
Psycho

You can read the complete run-down here.

Incidentally my choices were Antichrist, Suspiria, Eden Lake, The Devils and Don't Look Now.